Small wonder, therefore, that a youth, who returned from driving by post-chaise through the principal towns of Europe in the company of a meek chaplain,[392] returned from his tour about as much refined, according to Congreve, “as a Dutch skipper from a whale-fishing."[393] The whole idea of the Grand Tour was thrown into disrepute after its adoption by crude and low-bred people, who thought it necessary to inform all their acquaintance where they had been, by a very unbecoming dress and a very awkward address:  “not knowing that an Englishman’s beef-and-pudding face will not agree with a hat no bigger than a trencher; and that a man who never learned to make a bow performs it worse in a head of hair dressed a L’aille Pidgeon, than in a scratch wig."[394]

In many other ways, also, travel lost its dignity in the eighteenth century.  It was no longer necessary to live in foreign countries to understand them.  With the foundation of the chairs of modern history at Oxford and Cambridge by King George the First in 1724, one great reason for travel was lost.  Information about contemporary politics on the Continent could be had through the increasing number of news-journals and gazettes.  As for learning the French language, there had been no lack of competent teachers since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 sent French Protestant refugees swarming across the channel to find some sort of living in England.  Therefore the spirit of acquisitiveness dwindled and died down, in the absence of any strong need to study abroad, and an idle, frivolous, darting, capricious spirit controlled the aristocratic tourist.  Horace Walpole on his travels spent his time in a way that would have been censured by the Elizabethans.  He rushed everywhere, played cards, danced through the streets of Rheims before the ladies’ coaches, and hailed with delight every acquaintance from England.  What would Sir Philip Sidney have thought of the mode of life Walpole draws in this letter: 

“About two days ago, about four o’clock in the afternoon ... as we were picking our teeth round a littered table and in a crumby room, Gray[395] in an undress, Mr Conway in a morning-grey coat and I in a trim white night-gown and slippers, very much out of order, with a very little cold, a message discomposed us all of a sudden, with a service to Mr Walpole from Mr More, and that, if he pleased, he would wait on Mr Walpole.  We scuttle upstairs in great confusion, but with no other damage than the flinging down two or three glasses and the dropping a slipper by the way.  Having ordered the room to be cleaned out, and sent a very civil response to Mr More, we began to consider who Mr More might be."[396]